The advantage of Pauli-Villars regularization in quantum field theory quantized on the light front is explained. Simple examples of scalar $lambdavarphi^4$ field theory and Yukawa-type model are used. We give also an example of nonperturbative calculation in the theory with Pauli-Villars fields, using for that a model of anharmonic oscillator modified by inclusion of ghost variables playing the role similar to Pauli-Villars fields.
Calculations in a (3+1)-dimensional model indicate that Pauli-Villars regularization can be combined with discrete light-cone quantization (DLCQ) to solve at least some field theories nonperturbatively. Discrete momentum states of Pauli-Villars particles are included in the Fock basis to automatically generate needed counterterms; the resultant increase in basis size is found acceptable. The Lanczos algorithm is used to extract the lowest massive eigenstate and eigenvalue of the light-cone Hamiltonian, with basis sizes ranging up to 10.5 million. Each Fock-sector wave function is computed in this way, and from these one can obtain values for various quantities, such as average multiplicities and average momenta of constituents, structure functions, and a form-factor slope.
The techniques of Pauli-Villars regularization and discrete light-cone quantization are combined to analyze Yukawa theory in a single-fermion truncation. A special form of the Lanczos algorithm is constructed for diagonalization of the indefinite-metric light-cone Hamiltonian.
The Pauli-Villars regularization scheme is often used for evaluating parton distributions within the framework of the chiral quark soliton model with inclusion of the vacuum polarization effects. Its simplest version with a single subtraction term should however be taken with some caution, since it does not fully get rid of divergences contained in scalar and psuedoscalar quark densities appearing in the soliton equation of motion. To remedy this shortcoming, we propose here its natural extention, i.e. the Pauli-Villars regularization scheme with multi-subtraction terms. We also carry out a comparative analysis of the Pauli-Villars regularization scheme and more popular proper-time one. It turns out that some isovector observables like the isovector magnetic moment of the nucleon is rather sensitive to the choice of the regularization scheme. In the process of tracing the origin of this sensitivity, a noticeable difference of the two regularization scheme is revealed.
Basis Light-front Quantization (BLFQ) has recently been developed as a promising nonperturbative technique. Using BLFQ, we investigate the Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) in a nonperturbative framework for a dressed electron in QED. We evaluate light-front wave functions and carry out overlap calculations to obtain GPDs. We also perform perturbative calculations in the corresponding basis spaces to demonstrate that they compare reasonably with the BLFQ results.
We present a general framework to calculate the properties of relativistic compound systems from the knowledge of an elementary Hamiltonian. Our framework provides a well-controlled nonperturbative calculational scheme which can be systematically improved. The state vector of a physical system is calculated in light-front dynamics. From the general properties of this form of dynamics, the state vector can be further decomposed in well-defined Fock components. In order to control the convergence of this expansion, we advocate the use of the covariant formulation of light-front dynamics. In this formulation, the state vector is projected on an arbitrary light-front plane $omega cd x=0$ defined by a light-like four-vector $omega$. This enables us to control any violation of rotational invariance due to the truncation of the Fock expansion. We then present a general nonperturbative renormalization scheme in order to avoid field-theoretical divergences which may remain uncancelled due to this truncation. This general framework has been applied to a large variety of models. As a starting point, we consider QED for the two-body Fock space truncation and calculate the anomalous magnetic moment of the electron. We show that it coincides, in this approximation, with the well-known Schwinger term. Then we investigate the properties of a purely scalar system in the three-body approximation, where we highlight the role of antiparticle degrees of freedom. As a non-trivial example of our framework, we calculate the structure of a physical fermion in the Yukawa model, for the three-body Fock space truncation (but still without antifermion contributions). We finally show why our approach is also well-suited to describe effective field theories like chiral perturbation theory in the baryonic sector.